Space Policy Edition: Locke, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (in space)

Casey Dreier: Welcome to the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio. I'm Casey Dreier the Chief of Space Policy here at the Planetary Society. Dr. Rebecca Lowe first caught my attention when I came across her paper called 'The Value of Space Activity', and this paper's interesting. It explores the concept of value through the lens of classical liberalism, the philosophical tradition that prioritizes individual freedom and flourishing with a limited but effective state. I was particularly struck by her, I believe, unique application of theories from John Locke and Henry George, a concept of land value taxation to pressing question of lunar property rights and making a broader argument for why we humanity needs to be considering the concept of property rights beyond Earth, particularly at the Moon. Her proposal, I think, really cleverly balances incentives for lunar development while ensuring opportunities for fair access to resources. I had never seen anything quite like this before, and such an explicit application of concepts of classical liberalism seemed quite, I'd say relevant at the moment as we have a burgeoning growing and more capable private space market than at any point in human history. 

She goes further in her writings that these types of philosophical perspectives apply not just to, in a sense, the practical things, the instrumentally valuable concepts of economic activity or private ownership, but to the concept of the individual themselves, the idea of the experience of the individual through flourishing and freedom and intellectual growth. In other words, the value of space activity is also value intrinsic to the concept of knowledge itself. I was, again, quite intrigued, so I was delighted when Dr. Lowe accepted the invitation to speak with me today on the Space Policy Edition. She is a, as you might've guessed, a political philosopher with a particular interest in the rights and freedom and equality of individuals, and clearly she's also very interested in space and works as, what I love this title, a consulting space philosopher for the consulting outfit, AstroAnalytica. She joined the show to discuss this paper, but also a much broader discussion of how we apply the concepts of philosophy into what we do in space. 

The varieties of value, again, derived from these types of space activities. Why, again, establishing lunar property rights is actually a very pressing and immediate concern and this unique role of space, both as a domain of practical activity and I think very importantly for me as a conduit of feelings for wonder that's accessible broadly to functionally anyone who can look at a picture or even contemplate the activities of the cosmos. In other words, this means that space is simultaneously an instrumental good in that it's practical but also an intrinsic good that it's essential. Before we get to that discussion, I want to mention that the Planetary Society, the organization, my organization, hopefully, your organization, if you're a member, does require and lives and exclusively survives on the individual donations of people like you who may be listening to this. You can join as a member, our memberships start at just $4 a month at planetary.org/join. 

You can donate beyond that. You can donate to programs like our space policy and advocacy program and other great work that we do. But the point is that the Planetary Society exists because of individuals. We do not take corporation funding. We do not accept government grants. We are independent, and that makes us unique and enables us to provide hopefully quite interesting content like the ones you're listening to now, but also the wide variety of perspectives and community engagement and policy and advocacy that we do, but also the wide variety of content and community engagement and meetup opportunities and all the other great things that we do here at the Planetary Society. So if you're not a member, please consider joining us or donating to help us keep doing this great work. It's more important, obviously than ever right now that we are speaking up for space, and if you are a member, thank you. Honestly, just thank you for enabling this to succeed. And now my interview with Dr. Rebecca Lowe, starting now. Rebecca Lowe, thank you for joining us today at the Space Policy Edition.

Rebecca Lowe: Thanks so much for having me, Casey.

Casey Dreier: You write in one of your pieces talking about space that reveling in things that are non-quantifiably, hard to explain, valuable for their own sake is one of the great features of being human. I want to open with that because I resonated with that very strongly and frankly struggle with it as a person who advocates for space about how do you value the non-quantifiable. Do you think the idea of such concepts of non-quantifiable inherent value ideas has fallen out of favor in recent years or has this always been a perpetual struggle for our society?

Rebecca Lowe: Wow, I mean, that's a big question to start with. I think I'd say my first thing is something like there's an easy answer to, or there's an easy way to make that argument, which is just simply name me another animal that can do that or something like that. It's a descriptive point about... At least, I mean, I'm a big believer that we don't know enough about animals' capacities, but in as much as we do know stuff, it seems like human beings are quite distinct in having this capacity.

Casey Dreier: Do you feel like that as a valuation of society that's changed? I would assert that we've become a more quantified measurement-focused or even obsessive society and things that we don't easily measure have either intentionally or unintentionally lost value in a broader social discourse. Does that resonate with you?

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, I think it totally resonates with me. I have to be careful not to get onto my obsession of talking about consequentialism, which I think is a problem I have with a lot of modern philosophy, but also a lot of modern policy thinkers. They're very keen to assess value in terms of cost-benefit analysis. I think there's time and space for that, and it can be a helpful heuristic, but particularly when we get onto these things, which not even just the stuff which is impossible to value in that sense, but even the stuff which it is possible to do, but maybe just our measurement capacity isn't quite there yet. Those things may change with AI, who knows, but there are some things for sure, which we can't apply cost-benefit analysis to. There's another set of things which would be wrong to apply cost-benefit analysis to those two sets overlap, and I don't think they're identical. 

I'd say also though this point about basic goods, I think for some people at least there's a particular philosophical tradition that basic goods fit into. People might want to say that they associate it largely with the natural law tradition. For some people that's associated with religious philosophy. Some people want to say, I think particularly today, that maybe it's something that, for instance, Catholic philosophers focus on more. I think those are interesting claims. I think A, particular traditions don't get a monopoly on truths about the world or ways of seeing the world. 

So I think it's a bit of a shame when people want to put themselves into silos and not think about ways of doing stuff. I also just think as a final point though, it's a natural human thing to do this. Well, I'm certainly saying in a piece I'm writing at the moment, I can't really think of anything that better ties together just the kind of intrigue and interests of all humankinds across time than looking up and seeing the stars. My bet is that every ancient Egyptian did that. My bet is every ancient Mayan did that and maybe we're not good at discussing it. Maybe we're not good at... Maybe people have these tendencies to want to measure it, but I just can't help but think it's true that that's something descriptive and valuable about humankind.

Casey Dreier: I mean, I am from a Carl Sagan tradition, and that's in a sense how I became so committed to this field, this ironic idea that there's this whole scientific excitement of going into space or discovery or what have you, variety of things, but there's some unquantifiable internal state that it triggers, and to your point about ancient humans, I mean at the end of the day it feels like it's when you contemplate you as an individual against infinity, you arouse some interesting neurons firing in strange parts of your brain that I find rather interesting to experience. You go on after that sentence interestingly enough and this is just something I think how we talk about this is so important. 

You almost go to apologize saying this is so earnest and a bit emotional, and that's what I love about this, and I think that's in a sense, this essence of this tension that I feel has developed maybe in a lot of our modern society, but that space like it does with many fields exacerbates or intensifies the contradictions that are inherent in it because the domain is so strange. So going into space is simultaneously a rational engineering-focused, methodical motivation for discovery and scientific knowledge and resource development and so forth, but it's also a sublime experience that puts you in relation to the universe, and we can't talk about the latter part it feels to me as much these days because it's not as valued because it's unquantifiable or because we've lost some maybe familiarity with speaking with crassly the right side of our brains. Is this what philosophy is for in a sense, to help us merge those two?

Rebecca Lowe: I think it's what philosophy should be for, I don't know if it's all contemporary philosophy is about, but yeah, I mean I think one great thing about philosophy is it helps us to be precise, but another great thing about philosophy is that we just have endless opportunities to talk about whatever we want to talk about. It's an almost non-defined discipline, but which uses quite strict mechanisms or at least the kind of philosophy I like, which is I don't know guess 20th-century analytic philosophy. So you could write a paper in that tradition where you look at, I don't know the value of being alive, which is obviously a massive thing that as you say, maybe isn't a standard topic for contemporary conversation, but you might well apply to it concepts like necessary and sufficient conditions. A lot of people want to make fun of philosophers for doing that, and a lot of philosophers want to make fun of the kind of philosopher I am for doing that, but I actually think there's a lot of value to that kind of approach. 

It's an approach which says something like, "Look, we're going to take this concept even though maybe it's kind of impossible to pin down. We're going to relate it to other concepts. We're going to think about is there something objective here. Is there something trackable here?" Personally, I find that, and I think this actually resonates quite nicely with what you're saying that we don't do sufficiently these days. I actually find this stuff super fun. I find the rigor of it, the challenge of it super fun. That's why I love philosophy and I hadn't really thought about it before, but I think that probably also tracks why I love space. It's the challenge, but it's a valuable challenge. It's not just, and I was thinking about this a little bit earlier with the beautiful Michael Griffin piece we were talking about, you sent me, and I'm so grateful for you to introducing me to this. This is this wonderful speech where he talks about why is it important to fund the space program. 

Why should Americans pay their 15 cents a day? And he compares it to these reasons that have been given JFK saying, "We should do it because it's hard." Or mountain climbers saying we should do it because it's there. I love all that, but I also think there's another level which is it's not just because it's hard and because it's there, it's because it's hard and it's there and it's valuable. So we don't just do things just because they're there. We do them because they're there and they afford some value. Otherwise, how do we distinguish between all the things that are there? And I think for me, both philosophy and space offer something along those lines. It's completely expansive and infinite, but I actually think it's quite easy to say why it's important. It's embarrassing quite possibly. People don't use that language. It's like talking about love or something.

Casey Dreier: Love is good. It feels good to be-

Rebecca Lowe: But who's going to go and recite a sonnet these days? Whereas that's what you need to do. You have to be enthusiastic in a way that... I mean certainly in England, everyone's a cynic. Everybody wants to... That's what I love about America you do get enthusiasts. That's why NASA is American, I think. It's not just money, I mean it is money also. Don't get me wrong.

Casey Dreier: I've been very interested in the role that NASA plays as an expression of public values and maybe along to your point of expressing this idealism, optimism and self-challenge, and ambition to say, "Can we organize ourselves to tackle these things and for the sake of learning something that's on that red dot over there." And that's in a way a very, as you point out, culturally representative, I think of the classic American values. The role of space, I mean, you anticipated my next question was this how your philosophy informs your approach to space. So did one pre-exist before the other or are they intertwined in your educational and intellectual growth over the years?

Rebecca Lowe: I have an answer which annoys me as an individualist, which is I'm a product of my parents. My parents are both philosophers. My dad loves space. I have all these memories of when I was a kid looking at space with my dad. So I fought against not the space stuff, I've always loved that, but I fought against becoming a philosopher because I didn't want to just go into the family business. But turns out it's what I love the most. So yeah, I mean I like to think it's just a reflection of my own inherent personality, but that's probably also largely a product of my parents' genes and my upbringing. I do genuinely think though that I think if anybody tells you that don't feel something when they look up at the stars, then I think they're not very self-aware or they're lying.

Casey Dreier: I forget the exact quote, but the burden of an unexamined life in a sense. I can relate a story once I was working at the Planetary Society, I was manning a table. We had a piece of Mars from a Martian meteorite and we had a little sliver of it and we would say, "You can come over if you want to touch a piece of Mars today, how often do you get to do that?" And 99.8% of the people, we were at some public event and we say, "Hey, want to touch Mars?" And people go, "Oh yeah, we're great. Awesome. How incredible." And kids and even adults, something would that flicker in their eyes. And I distinctly remember this one older man walking by and I say, "Hi, do you want to touch a piece of Mars?" And he stops and he looks at me and then is just with the dripping with disdain, says no, and continues to walk on. 

And that was a very formative moment for me in that I realized that what I thought was some universal essence of being of just if nothing else, the cure... I'm not asking them to support the space program. I'm not asking them to raise their taxes. I'm not... It's just, do you want to touch Mars for free? And apparently, he was too busy to stop and do that. And that actually kind of brings me around to this larger tension you note in Michael Griffin's piece, but just more broadly in some of the values discussions that you've had, which is this tension I think between the individual and the collective or the individual and society. 

And this idea that these motivations that we do and value and justification we give for space generally break down to addressing one or the other with the favor being generally for the society, which tends to be more bloodless and practical, but missing something I think is very important. When you make these appeals to the individual aspect, the sense of adventure, discovery, curiosity, looking up at the stars and feeling something, you're making an assumption that individuals, that is a common existence, and can we assume that or broadly within cultural influences or people who are just lacking, let's say, I'm trying to be nice, something important. I mean, are we making an assertion that isn't true when we appeal to some sort of individualist ethos of experiencing the concept of the cosmos?

Rebecca Lowe: So the first thing I think I'd say, and this actually comes back to your guy who didn't want to touch Mars for free. I mean imagine that. Sometimes people's subjective preferences are really bad and wrong, not just for them, but just generally. I bet he went and secretly regretted it and if he didn't, then I feel sorry for him, not because I think there are infinite ways to live a good life and not everybody has to be obsessed with space like us, but missing some-

Casey Dreier: But he didn't look like a happy person either.

Rebecca Lowe: Right. I'm not surprised. So one way of answering your question is that to say something like, "Look, what's good for the collective isn't just an aggregation of their subjective preferences. There are some objective things that are good for the collective, and one of those things is for instance, the pursuit of knowledge, the achievement, going back to the basic goods idea." And I think that's true, but another way of answering this question, which again I think is not a terribly popular position, but it's a position I genuinely hold, which is I don't think that individual freedoms or rights or goods are in conflict with the common good. 

I thought about this quite a lot when I was thinking about Locke. I wrote my PhD thesis on Locke and I was trying to come up with good [inaudible 00:18:29] Lockean-type arguments with private property, and one of the arguments I landed on is this common good type argument on which, and this is inspired by people like John Finnis who is in that natural law tradition, which is the idea of something like, look, it's in all individual's interests for other people to flourish, and one reason for that is because it's bad to do bad stuff to other people. Another reason is there's a common good of all the groups we're in, and so us having this conversation is a common good of that. And someone like John Finnis, this great academic philosopher would say something like, "The common good is the directive element in practical thinking for rational deliberation in our group. So our common good's good is in its shared purpose." And he would say something like, "The common good is not in conflict with individual rights because they're partly constitutive of it," and I think it's the same with individual interests. That's not to deny that some people think their interest is doing bad stuff or not furthering knowledge or not touching the Mars rock. It's just to say that if the thing I want to do to be free... If the thing I freely want to do, which I think is valuable for me is strongly against the interest of all the groups I'm a member of, then maybe it's not in my good and I don't have to be some kind of collectivist who means we all drive Trabants and we have no way to meet our individual needs and preferences to recognize that. It might be harder to work out what seem like conflicts. But I don't think from a starting off point that those things are necessarily in conflict is what I'm saying I think. Sorry, that's a very long philosopher's answer.

Casey Dreier: That's why you're here. I mean is it in the sense that then we could appeal to this individual sense of meaning and value for something like space, but it doesn't preclude that some people just may not feel that because it doesn't force everyone to go into space or support space at least in a consequential way, in that maybe they get levied a small amount of taxes, but not enough to prevent them from pursuing whatever dim and empty view of the world that they would otherwise have if they're uninterested in space not to apply my own. Is that in a sense a way to think about what you're saying here?

Rebecca Lowe: I think that's right. I also think one easy way to fit the space example, particularly into this kind of framework is just to say, "Well actually look, there's massive positive externalities of just some people going into space," and by saying that we have a human interest in space exploration. It doesn't amount to saying every single person should go into space and it certainly doesn't account to saying that they've got an obligation to do it or anything like that. In terms of your point around, however, there may be being some costs for them in terms of their tax dollar or whatever. 

You're going to have to come up with arguments, particularly in terms of opportunity cost because a lot of people are going to say, "Well, Rebecca, that's very nice, but we need more money for the NHS." So we have to be mindful to make justifications. Personally, I actually think it's quite easy to make arguments for space exploration. Maybe not in terms of the UK should have its own space program, although I have friends who feel very strongly that we should, I think that's a harder argument, but that humankind should be doing space exploration even though it's financially costly I think is very easy to justify.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, let's hear them. Let's hear your justifications because, I mean you write them in your papers, but this is why I invited you on, but let's address them internally, or maybe should we very quickly start define the concept of classical liberalism because I think is that accurate in defining the intellectual background that you're coming from and how you apply your philosophical approach?

Rebecca Lowe: Well, that's a big question too. Yeah, I mean my view is something like liberalism is a family of theories on which freedom is an important value. I think-

Casey Dreier: And I make this distinction mainly because in the US political dichotomy of liberal versus conservative, this is a different type of liberalism.

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, I'm not talking about, and I'm not talking about what I think, I sometimes find it hard to map these kind of cultural concepts and moves and shifts, but in as much as I understand the more modern derogatory term liberal or indeed a term that other people might want to-

Casey Dreier: Embrace.

Rebecca Lowe: ... embrace. I'm not talking about something like, oh, we need to have really high tax rates and also embrace some things that some people would call woke. I don't really want to get into what that might count as, but I think what I'm talking about is something I guess as you might describe is narrow in some sense. It's not like a set of policy prescriptions, although of course, you could use this way of thinking to inform policy, and I think we should. It's just saying something like freedom is an important value. There's a tradition of thinkers, people like Locke and Mill who have written interestingly and importantly about these things. A particular strand of classical liberalism I'm interested in also has a focus on individual rights, although as I say, I think the very even more specific bit that I'm interested in doesn't see those as in tension with the common good so-

Casey Dreier: So it's a focus in a sense of the individual and the preserving the freedom of the individual. Is that too crass of a way to put it, but just in a broad sense, it's an individual-centric approach to human flourishing.

Rebecca Lowe: I think that's right, but I think also one of the reasons why the individual is important within classical liberalism and could be at least I certainly see it anyway, points to an inherent egalitarianism within classical liberalism because it's saying you are important as an individual, I'm important as an individual. The reason that we're both important as individuals is the same reason because we have moral value as persons, as living things, which is a slightly bigger set of things in persons, and this-

Casey Dreier: Just being alive and being human is a value, is it?

Rebecca Lowe: It's something specifically valuable and with that comes some obligations including some obligation for basically all respect, respect in terms of not over interfering in each other's lives, respect in terms of protecting each other in certain situations.

Casey Dreier: Is that also a Kantian set the categorical imperative, this idea that we have a right to exist or am I mangling my philosophical [inaudible 00:24:38]-

Rebecca Lowe: I don't think you are mangling. I mean there is an idea on which the categorical imperative is something that it's universalizable. So if you want to come up with rules, the rules have to apply to everybody. But yeah, look, certainly by the kind of midpoint onwards of the last millennium, philosophers started putting a different focus on individuals. Personally, I don't really buy this idea that back in Roman times the individual didn't exist or something like that. Certainly, people talked about rights in different ways. Oftentimes, or almost always, at least a little bit later, these were seen as things that were owed to God with the rise of the individual within religious circles too, on which you can talk to God or learn about God by reading the Bible yourself. It doesn't have to just come through the church and priests, so there's more space for individuals to do things and to be recognized as right- bearing creatures. 

I'm not really sure that that was entirely missing previous to that in human society. It sounds to me weird this idea is sometimes you read these things where people are suggesting that we were just one big gloopy mass who treated each other as part of the gloopy mass, and I'm not sure I buy that. It's certainly the case, however, in a more specific level that for instance, women's interests or people of certain races' interests, they were treated as people with fewer rights, as people with less important interests. And of course, one of the wonderful things about progress is that we've moved on from that, not fully, but to a large extent.

Casey Dreier: Well, and thank you. So I wanted to just define a little bit this perspective of using this classical liberal tradition with a focus on the individual and integrating it into values for space. To me, I think it's an important and novel contribution to how we talk about it, which tends to be societally focused. And so I interrupted you the first time, but I'm curious, what would you say is the values of going into space that are at least your top tier, most easily justifiable ones that you go to?

Rebecca Lowe: Wow. So I think achievement, I think knowledge, I think it's fulfillment, which is a kind of maybe slightly wider category than achievement-

Casey Dreier: Fulfillment of experiential, like feeling fulfilled or-

Rebecca Lowe: I think in terms of feeling like you've... So there's a subjective sense in which is feeling as if you've led a worthwhile life as if you've satisfied some kind of demand upon you to achieve the good. It's what Aristotle would call the Eudaimonia idea. I'm a big believer that I do think fulfillment is both subjectively and objectively important. So I think it might well be the case that somebody feels like they've led a fulfilling life, but objectively they haven't. So the classic philosopher's example is finding pleasure in counting blades of grass or something. Maybe somebody might well feel fulfilled from having led a life in which they spent their time counting blades of grass but I think on the same way that we might feel some pity for the man who didn't want to touch the moon rock for free I think we would also feel some pity for that person. 

It's not a paradigmatic example of a human making the most of their capacities and also the world in which they live. So it's probably be something like that. It's finding things that, and again, I think, and this is again a very typical classical liberal answer. There's multiple ways to live a good life and other people shouldn't be imposing upon us a particular conception of the good life. The classic concern would be when the state does that, but it's not just the state that wants to interfere in our own pursuit of the good, so we should be mindful of also things like social norms or our employers or our families imposing on a [inaudible 00:28:37] of the good. But that's not, like I say, to suggest that all pursuits just because they're self-chosen are tracking something that's objectively good.

Casey Dreier: I could see also an argument that from that perspective space just increases the number of opportunities to find fulfillment or find new ways to achieve a well-lived life. Whether you're going into it directly or enabling just that it literally opens up a new expanse to find new pathways for the individual.

Rebecca Lowe: I love that. Absolutely. I've seen that's absolutely true. I was thinking about this earlier when I was thinking about comparisons with climbing mountains and going into space. I think it's a good analogy, but I don't think it's perfect all, of course, the whole point about analogies is that they aren't perfect because I think one thing you might want to say is something like the value of climbing the mountain to the person who really has that desire to do it, and they're managing to employ their well-honed skills. Maybe they have some particular interest in the particular rock formations, some pleasure also in doing it's quite easy to justify it in terms of seeming as if it's giving a genuine objective, good tracking achievement to the individual. I completely can see that, but I think you're right. 

Because I think you're implying that there's this extra level though when you go into space. It seems to me that for instance, it's not just that you get a different viewpoint and you are somewhere new. It's somewhere that nobody's been. So we can fly over mountains. There are places in the universe that we've never been. I think it's easier probably to make an argument that individuals spending their short time on earth going and doing the very, very risky thing of going into space, it's easier to see that that's valuable for humankind than climbing the mountain is.

Casey Dreier: That's interesting. So this is a topic I wanted to explore with you. Yeah. You brought up this era... I was thinking of when I was reading some of your work about the era of romantic exploration. So going up to Mount Everest the first time, or Shackleton's expeditions to the pole or wherever, kind of these extreme areas of on the cusp of mechanization and the cusp of modernity when there were still these vast unexplored areas of earth. And just by going and people taking these great risks similar to me, to what we're seeing with the rise of, I'd say particularly private spaceflight. And so this is this era, and this is what again, I found so interesting in your paper, trying to incorporate these new types of activities in space that were prior purely the domain of governments. So we're opening up in a sense, this role of the individual now can go into space at a purely individual level. 

And I was thinking a lot about this with Jared Isaacman, who was at the time we're recording this, the nominee to be NASA administrator. He to me in a sense, by going with his Polaris Dawn and Inspiration4 missions, these are missions that have risk and they have a certain amount of uncertainty and daring that requires them and would be otherwise completely unjustifiable from a NASA perspective. So he went and they did these really high elliptical orbits to go further into space than anyone since Apollo 17. Maybe NASA could have done that, but why? And it's like, well, it's pretty cool that they can do that. 

And so it brought back this idea of adventurism, and that's what I was trying to tie it back in terms of value. Can we learn anything from that era what you were just saying, that there may be this distinct fundamental difference between space and anywhere on earth to begin with, but I almost wonder the way that we talk about it or that was written about was those types of adventurism seen as perhaps an expression of the vibrancy and dynamism of the societies from which they came, and I wonder if at a certain level we see space the same way that it's an indicator of some societal health or lack thereof based on what people are willing to do and make it back or sometimes not, but make a real good go at it.

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, I mean I think that's a great point. I think first of all, we should all be grateful and I find it very endlessly frustrating that people are down on, for instance, some of the private space flight stuff. Because if these people are willing to not only risk their own personal well-being, but also spend their personal capital on stuff which will teach us things, the knowledge we find not just about those places per se, but scientific development, medical development.

Casey Dreier: Even enabling architecture to get more other things in space.

Rebecca Lowe: Absolutely. All of these things, I mean, if you think alone, and I think this comes back to something you said before about space. When I was reading, I was writing this piece recently, I read quite a bit about the medical advances that have come from experiments done in space, and of course, there's this great point that just it's so extreme out there that it can be much easier to discover stuff because you can run different kinds of experiments. It's also a great thing that I hadn't thought about earlier, which is that most of the people who go to NASA are pretty similar, so even just physically, they're mostly men of certain height, certain kinds of personal characteristics. The era of private space flight is an era in which I mean even just on the level of testing stuff, you get a set of people that's much more representative of humankind.

Casey Dreier: We'll be right back with the rest of our Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio after this short break.

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Casey Dreier: There are more billionaires, I think, than people who have gone to space professionally by governments, and so in some ways, even if you just restricted billionaires, the range of people, now of course being a billionaire is generally not an equal representation of who becomes billionaires, but you're right. And finally, us chubby individuals like myself can finally have a shot of going into space or not having... My boss Bill would always joke about astronaut application, how many PhDs do you have? One to three, four to five. It's like, what about if I don't have any? Yeah, and it theoretically could, and again, even wealthy individuals are theoretically going to be a wider range of participants, plus the enabling thing, which again, I find interesting in terms of opening up access just in the way, again, it was wealthy individuals for the most part, who were doing those adventuring back in the day.

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah. I'd also, now, I think the first thing I'm going to do after our conversation is go and look back at the big peaks of these other previous achievements and think about what was going on in their societies because I like your point around vibrance, societal dynamism. I guess one thing I'm thinking about, I mean, I think certainly in the UK some of this stuff is happening in the Victorian period, which isn't really a period I think of so much as... But maybe that's unfair. I need to go back and think about these things.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, it's a thought that I had because it's-

Rebecca Lowe: I like it. Yeah.

Casey Dreier: The connection to this era is expressly made, particularly in the mid-20th century when early space advocates were trying to themselves justify space. And again, you mentioned, you hear it in John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation at Rice University, like why I would go climb the highest mountain. And again, you see this reflected in how Griffin talks about it. It's a way of appealing, again, I think to the individual ethos of you could resonate with adventure, you resonate with that horizon, even if in a policy level that argument dies, right? That does not get you anywhere in your public policy sphere and you need to show also some sort of quantifiable, measurable payoff to help then garner those collective resources to create an event that is otherwise... And maybe this is why space was so weird in the first place. That space came out at a point in history where technologically and economically speaking, only governments could do it. 

As you will talk about this a little bit, you talk a lot about the Outer Space Treaty and its role with property rights or lack thereof in space. I mean, it just was inconceivable in 1967 that you would be having individuals claiming, I mean, actively being able to go into space. And we may have had the strange inversion because of that because only governments in a sense occupy the space before and now it's slowly moving into the domain of the individual and private sector you have these strange establishments of how we go about doing things and expectation. 

I go back to this a lot, this idea that space as at least conceived here through NASA is this elevated, higher-minded, broadly universalist presentation that it is going, as I said, this expression of values and the addition and development of private space to me has added an interesting tension to that because you start seeing individuals with all of their inherent idiosyncrasies and complexities and maybe irritations or if you don't like them politically or you start to associate the act of going to space now with people rather than a system. And it's a lot easier to dislike people or inversely be inspired by people than it is a system. And so I think we're in this strange transition point that we're culturally working through to expand this concept of what goes into space and why, and then how that intersects with us as ourselves as individuals.

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, I think that's right. One thing I suppose I was thinking about, which definitely resonates with what you're saying is that if you want to do this as a government, if you want to defend having a government agency doing those things, you need to align your goals with political goals, or at least if you're doing really big stuff, it seems. For instance, there's a concern about space funding being tied up with what you would call if you were trying hard to defend it, defense spending. Another way of talking about it would be war spending or military spending. It also just reminded me though, this claim that an economist friend of mine likes to make, which is something like, and I've heard other people make this too, I'd be interested in knowing your take on it, that the kind of political... The politically motivated justification for NASA during the space race, which obviously was to beat down the Soviet Union, prove we're the best, reach peace through American winning, or however you want to put it, actually really cost the development of space rockets. 

So the kind of technology that was developed in order just to meet that very specific goal prevented the more, I guess, iterative or multi-goal designed type of technology that you might've seen otherwise. So I guess the classic example would be, hey, we just need to get there it doesn't matter if we don't get back. Now, that wasn't quite how NASA did it. Do you think that's a fair claim? Whereas if you compare that for instance, with the Musk approach, which is super iterative, it's super like, hey, we can waste stuff. We're just going to keep on trying and trying and trying. Eventually, we'll get to a point and then we'll go from there. We'll try and try and try. Whereas the very kind of, hey, we've got this specific political goal, we need to beat the USSR. We don't really care that the thing we're designing won't then be well-suited to go to Mars, to go to Jupiter. Is that a fair claim that that's a cost of-

Casey Dreier: I think there's a kernel of truth there. I would disagree though, because NASA... I mean during Apollo perhaps, and yes, the goal was to get to the moon and get a human back and cost was not-

Rebecca Lowe: Sorry, I'm a big Apollo fan, so most of the stuff I say will be heavily biased to the Apollo era-

Casey Dreier: Well, but to that end though, I mean, yeah, so they did design though with cost as no object. And then when Apollo was won and the political support melted away, the cost is no object was no longer decided to be borne by the country. But I think there's been this interesting mass clean wipe of the idea that the space shuttle was the first reusable spacecraft. The goal, despite how it was implemented, the intent was to do exactly what your friend is talking about is have this reusable, lower cost, high-frequency access to space that would mix space flight routine. And it was going to supposed to be the only launch vehicle for the entire US fleet, including commercial systems. And obviously, it never made it there because in a sense... What I think the kernel of truth is that Apollo itself made NASA this symbolic representation of the nation. 

And that failure is not an option, is a consequence of that connection that if NASA fails, it's not just NASA failing. It's some symbolic statement about the state of the country. If the space shuttle explodes, which it did, there would be congressional oversight. Major news. Is the US capable of doing these things anymore? They're not allowed to fail. And because of that, the iterative aspect that you highlight could no longer be tolerated. You look at those early rocket tests of the 1960s and they're blowing up all the time and they just, all right, well, we're building three more. And I think that's in a sense, maybe the kernel is that NASA was burdened by the incredible success of Apollo, but then was never provided the same resources ever again. And so they have ever since this Apollo mindset baked into the essence and the self-identity of the agency without the resources to pursue that. 

And then they've been constrained by we have to succeed in what we're given. And so the shuttle was an amazing proof of concept and various iterations that never came to be if the shuttle would've been fully reusable. But the political requirements of selling that at a time when the US was... It's almost again, kind of to my point about maybe space as indicative of the health of a society that the early seventies with Nixon and a lot of pullbacks and a lot of disruption and exhaustion from the Vietnam War, there just wasn't an appetite to do a big space thing. And so it had to sell it to everybody, and then they kind of arbitrarily kept the budget. So I think there's maybe the kernel, but they tried. And at the end of the day, I think it's more of a function of the institutional incentives that exist for a public agency versus private agency, which is where I think we've seen the real innovation happening in.

Rebecca Lowe: I think the other point to make I guess is just that the opportunity cost wasn't like, Hey, the private guys are going to go and do it. I just don't think that's the case. I think the private stuff is happening now because of the public stuff that happened.

Casey Dreier: It was explicit policy starting in 1984 with the Commercial Space Act and then NASA functionally investing in SpaceX early.

Rebecca Lowe: Similarly though actually on that point of opportunity cost, I also think people miss... So one thing people want to say about the billionaire splashing their cash going into space, they want to say they should be spending it on X instead. But I often think that just isn't the opportunity cost. They're not going to do that. They might spend it on another motorboat or another island. I don't think they're going to spend it on whatever person over there's particular policy priority is. I mean some of them might, right? But I think we sometimes miss that just because something is an alternative option doesn't mean it's a possible or feasible alternative option.

Casey Dreier: Indeed. And they tend not to get as much press for building that second super yacht than as they do for launching into space and I'd rather personally have them launch into space than build a second yacht.

Rebecca Lowe: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Casey Dreier: But, and again, I think this goes to that tension of individualist appeals and this is why again, seeing it through a classical liberal perspective ties it I think into a deeper intellectual and philosophical tradition. I want to bring into this discussion now your interesting, I wouldn't call it a paper it was a whole report article like a long PC wrote for the Adam Smith Institute about the idea of how we could approach property rights in space from this Lockean perspective. And I guess you also George's style, which I think I was learned about for the first time. But can you briefly outline your idea for how this could work within the potential confines of the Outer Space Treaty and why you think this is an important aspect of how we proceed?

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, so I mean, I guess I came at this from thinking my interest in space and also my interest in property. I'd been thinking a lot about Lockean property rights where my PhD thesis on... And I came to the conclusion that we have a very short amount of time to determine as humankind a justified and effective means for allocating property rights in space. The case of the matter is that the Outer Space Treaty in the 1960s, as you said earlier when that was ratified when that was being written, the idea that we'd be where we are now was science fiction, both in terms of the stuff that states are doing and the stuff that individuals are doing. And of course most of the individual stuff, the private space is heavily dependent still on state funding and whether it's in terms of procurement, whether it's in terms of actual grants, I mean, I think certainly outside of America, that's very much the case. 

I'd say also probably still in America, I think it's the case that the kinds of activities that are now starting to happen in space, however, whether it's the space junk problem, whether it's some of the things that are happening on the moon, we are going to soon just see people starting to claim stuff. We know this from human history. There's a natural instinct in favor of first come, first served, the person who gets there, even if it's not morally justified for them to have a claim, it's pretty hard to compete against that, and/or it can be, it just gives them an interest in favor. And I think if we're not careful then either autocratic leaders of nations or billionaires who are bringing us vast value by going into space again, they start land grabbing. We can debate all day about how bad that is. 

But if we want to do things in a different way, and particularly, I mean I come at this from the point of view of just being interested in good ways of governance. So I'm interested in what would actually a good system of property rights look like. On earth, it's really hard. It's very murky. You have all these chains of ownership that have bad links. You think you own your garden, but it turns out the previous person stole it from someone else. You think you own that watch, but it turns out that we just don't know who owned it back in a hundred years ago. I'm not saying that those things are completely impossible to reconcile. We come up with ways of doing that but the really interesting thing about space is that people haven't made claims. They certainly haven't made claims by being there, and legally there is no way to make claims. 

And I should say I haven't been thinking about this in as much detail since I... I thought about this in a lot of detail. I read a lot of the space law stuff back when I was writing that paper a couple of years back, but I found a lot of the space law literature quite frustrating. There were people saying, "This treaty can only be interpreted in this way and not any other way." And then of course everyone else saying, it must be interpreted in this way and not this other way. But I've pretty much came to the conclusion that there was going to be needs to be some kind of shift unless we just want first come first serve to be the way in which space ownership is governed. And I found this an opportunity to think about some of the stuff I'd been thinking about property rights more generally. 

I came up with what I think is a pretty decent mechanism that could be applied. I think it'd be quite hard to do it in practical terms. I think there are all kinds of questions about who would set it in motion, who would enforce it. Those are questions I'd like to say for lawyers rather than philosophers. I think there are also many other ways of doing this. As you mentioned, my approach was pretty heavily influenced by Henry George, so I'm a big fan as indeed are probably most people of the Georgian land value tax approach. It's famous, I think amongst policy ideas for being something that the value of it is seen by people from all different ends of the political spectrum. So this is the basic idea, land is a special form of ownership. It's a scarce natural resource. It's got a fixed supply. 

You might also want to say some other stuff like it's part of our shared ecosystem, it meets our needs. And then this more general idea, which the land value tax thing is particularly hung upon is that it doesn't really get changed that much regardless of what we do to it. So therefore we should be equally taxed for owning it. This prevents counterproductive approaches on which you effectively penalized for doing good stuff to the land. 

So I took this way of thinking about things and thought, what if we were to come up with a framework for some kind of temporary and conditional ownership of space land plots on which as long as you are doing justifiable stuff and we can bracket off what that means, then you shouldn't be penalized for being productive, but you should be competing for the opportunity to have access to that land. And my ulterior goal was something like, is there a way we can set this up such that it enables more people to compete? So there's vast amount of value to be derived as long as the prices are set right from the few people who could do it and really want to do it. I bet you the people who currently are able to do that would pay a lot of money. The question is-

Casey Dreier: Because in a sense, yeah, again, just to emphasize the idea is that you are almost leasing the rights to the land and then you pay a tax or some sort of fee for utilizing it that then goes into a common fund to enable-

Rebecca Lowe: Pretty much, so you basically pay humankind for the opportunity to use the land because you say something like, we equally own it. Now, of course, you're going to have to find someone to administer the fund for humankind, but again, problem for the lawyers. And then depending on how many people you've got competing and depending on what the demand is, you work out a pricing structure. And then I put these other little, I guess, caveats in, which would be something like if you want to take into account some of the other features of land use and land value, so if points around conservation, because whilst it's the case that the underlying value of the land is going to retain its value on some level on the Georgist account, it's still the case you might damage the surface. 

It's the case that while you are doing that stuff, other people can't be doing stuff there. There's a zero-sum element because it's got its fixed supply, and particularly when it's the case, not only that you are competing with other people who can compete, you're competing with the other people who just don't have the capacity. The average person on earth has just as equal, I'd say, a potential right to use that stuff, but they just can't even get there. So the question is this a mechanism which you can address those things, and I think you could have some kind of rebate system on which the rent you would pay would be reduced. 

So again, you think of it in terms of pricing. I don't really mind how you think about it. If you were serving these goals, say if there's a penalty or think of it as a rebate, it doesn't really matter. So that if you are already doing stuff with the land that for instance helps other people to compete by furthering scientific knowledge. If for instance, the kinds of experiments you do enable greater access to resources in some way.

Casey Dreier: It could be building landing pads, you could be extracting ice water.

Rebecca Lowe: There's all kinds of... I think, exactly. There's all kinds of things. Then beyond the kind of set of things, which could also add value in the sense of, I don't know, asteroid mining, it's also the case that you could just tap into people's desire to use this land and find some way of making an equitable pricing system that not only doesn't exploit them but also doesn't preclude other people from using the land. Something like that. Anyway, I mean I set it out in the paper. I also talk about it in Reason Magazine, but those were the kinds of thoughts I was having. Like I said, I think there's other ways of doing this, but if we don't get on and have a think about these things, people are just going to grab the land. I mean, they're already effectively doing that, or at least they're trying to shift the international legal situation by effectively putting in place a kind of jus cogens norm. 

So one way you change the legal situation internationally is by treaty change. That's quite hard to see happening really at the moment or by coming up with a new overriding treaty. I mean, good luck getting Russia and China, and America to agree on that stuff. The other way is that you just change the norm by you just make it the case that something is standard and it's recognized. And I think that's what the Artemis Accords and that's not just my own view. I think a lot of people have that view that they're trying to shift the norm in favor of, and if you're a cynic, you'd say in favor of the people with the first mover advantage, which oh, just happens to be America. I'm all for American don't get me wrong but-

Casey Dreier: It kind of is both. But again, that's that expression of values, right? Of the societal values. But that's interesting to me because I think you're seeing this to a degree in particularly mega constellations where the regulatory environment's way behind. They're just barreling ahead, I think for that exact reason to say, "Well, now we occupy this space figuratively and literally, we are going to be the ones setting now what you're going to tell us we can't do... It's too late. And I think to your point that this is a really interesting way to think about this in terms of, again, this is what I found so interesting from taking an... Well, I use the word individualist, but I know it's much more complicated than that, but this classical liberal tradition and applying it to what can we do as incentivizing individuals to behave in a way that still has some justice and equity for everyone. Because I think that goes back as you said everyone has equal rights to it because every individual has the rights, these shared set of rights.

Rebecca Lowe: That's right. I think you can't be a proper individualist unless you're an egalitarianism because I only matter as an individual because you matter as an individual. That doesn't mean that you get to tell me what to do or that some boss gets to come along and form us into a collective. It just means that the reason that I have rights which protect my individual interests and my individual freedoms are the same reasons that you do also. I'm definitely an individualist and I'm definitely a classical liberal, but I think inherent in that is a deep egalitarianism-

Casey Dreier: Egalitarianism.

Rebecca Lowe: ... not in the sense of everyone needs to have the same stuff or even everyone needs to have the same opportunities, but certainly in this sense of basic respect of basic hey, I have these things because I'm the same kind of thing as you are.

Casey Dreier: I think one of the interesting things again about space is that the domain itself is so physically different than the Earth that when we start to apply theories that we've developed on Earth, we start to see where we've made fundamental assumptions that may not always be true. And generally, I've always thought of that in the scientific sense, right? So one of my arguments for discovery science, exploratory science is that do we really know how planet formation works because we've studied geology on earth probably. Well, we go to Mars, we can start to test if that's true or wherever. We can actually stress test these theories and say, what did we inadvertently take for granted? 

And what I liked again about reading some of your work is that I think that applies to some of these philosophical traditions too, where can you... If you take a tradition developed again, I imagine they weren't intentionally saying, "Oh, well we'll think of an earth philosophy." It's just philosophy, this existence, and start applying it to these other areas where, oh, we took the concept of error for granted. That's something we assume we all have here on earth. You can see again, it brings out interesting ideas and theories and maybe interesting challenges. So that was, I wanted to talk about this concept of the egalitarian and individualist perspectives of classical liberal in this, again, history of, I'd say John Locke, if I can accurately say that. 

Mapped onto a domain where I think so far and even with I'd say to some degree with individuals in private space we've seen is still a pretty collective effort and we look at the nation states that are fundamental still the vast majority of spending and activity in space is through nation states, but also Elon Musk with SpaceX has 10,000 people. He himself isn't doing it, right? It's thousands and thousands of people working. Same with any other person going into space, and when you're in space, you have a ground crew and communications. You have this so many people required to enable one's continued existence in space or to do anything in space. And so does that in some way challenge the application of our perspective of classical liberalism to something that is almost inherently collective in its application of actually pursuing it?

Rebecca Lowe: Sure it does. I mean, I think as long as we're choosing to do that ourselves, I don't think there's anything inherently opposed to working together, collaborating. I mean there's going to be questions about the kind of conditions of cooperation and the reasons that we're collaborating. If we're because the government has allocated these jobs to us and you and I are the space scientists, even if we're not scientists and even if we don't want to go into space, then I've obviously got a problem with that. I think choosing to band together to do good stuff is a great feature of humankind. I'm with Aristotle a way with social creatures. I think if you don't have space in your moral philosophy for the individual and the individual worth and individual value, and particularly if you want to aggregate out people and suggest that goals should be determined in terms of the quality of aggregation or the truth should be sought in that way or the right action should be judged in that way, I'm going to have a lot of problems with that. 

But I think aside from anything else, it's also the case that the mountaineers of the past depended on other people. Sometimes those other people get overlooked. We hear about the Edmund Hillary, we don't hear so much about the Sherpa. It makes me also think a little bit about there's that famous line, isn't there about everyone at NASA helping get America to the moon, the janitor and the administrator?

Casey Dreier: What's your job? I'm helping getting someone to the moon and yeah.

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah. Exactly. I like that. And again that-

Casey Dreier: The key is, I guess individual choice, is that the unlocking that-

Rebecca Lowe: So one way of looking at this stuff, I mean look, there are different ways in different traditions of talking about this stuff. Some people want to say that this kind of liberalism is about non-domination, so it's about people not forcing stuff onto you. Some people want to say it's about having the opportunity to determine the good for yourself, but I think an easy way of it is just coming back to this point around determining what the good is for yourself in line though with some objective standards, not the grass counting. And if you can imagine a society in which there's not just space for us to do that, but we also come up with institutions and norms which enable us to contribute to society through doing the things that we find valuable. That's going to entail also things like access to education, access to training, some kinds of shared awareness of valuable goals. 

If you live in a society where science isn't valued, it's going to be pretty hard to be a scientist because you are going to need the kinds of resources that probably aren't available just to you as an individual. You're going to need networks. As smart as you are, you're going to benefit from having your ideas tested by other people. You're going to have to have a space in which you can say ridiculous things. We don't come to scientific conclusions without people getting stuff wrong and also without people challenging the status quo. So there are going to need to be some conditions of cooperation which people are going to have needed to feed into in order to achieve things as individuals. And a lot of that, the value of achieving stuff as individuals will have positive [inaudible 01:02:02]. There also may well be however conflicts, particularly if there are limited resources. 

We live in a time though where it may be the case quite soon that some of our resource problems vastly reduce because of AI and other technologies. Personally, I think that's not going to take away questions about distribution and questions about productivity even actually, just because we reach a time of effective non-scarcity of goods doesn't mean that we're going to retain that time. It doesn't mean... So actually coming back to the private property stuff, I think private property is value believing in a world of relative lack of scarcity, partly because of the allocative value of private property systems. Partly, because I just don't actually think... I mean you can't eat an apple without having a private property right in it. But that may be a controversial view, but also because I think as, and again, particular strata classical liberalism I like is one in which political rights are really important. 

The control we have over how we live our lives isn't just as individuals, it's also as members of groups. And if we don't have a say in that in the stuff that's our business, then we're being wronged. We're being deeply wronged. And I think one thing we should have a say about is how our property systems are structured and if private property is a justifiable and effective way of managing resources, creating resources, allocating resources, etc. And I think it is both justified and effective. I think it's wrong as a matter of our democratic rights to deny it. Sorry, I've gone a little off-topic, but I think it's relevant.

Casey Dreier: Yeah, no, absolutely. Again, it's just fascinating how many avenues I think we can inform how we approach this. And again, I think that the key almost, again, this is relevant now because of the addition of private individuals rather than just nation-states. And so as the activity, and so this is the title of your recent paper is called 'The Value of Space Activity' again, which I thought was a nice way to encompass the variety of things now that are happening, not just nation-states. And we have to start in a sense thinking about this more carefully and maybe just accepting it. There's a lot of still unproven and uncertain aspects here, and I think there's a whole separate discussion about if you live in one of these places, how you can manage both the relationship between individualism and having your rights impinged if you can open a window and kill everybody or if the air you breathe isn't an endless supply of... I think that's where... But those are probably theoretical enough for now that we can leave them as problems for the listeners to work through. 

But to start to wrap up, I'm interested in this idea then you open one of your papers with this concept of space activity as a source of human happiness. And again, I like that framing of it because bringing in happiness, again, it's one of those feelings that maybe we don't talk about enough, and again this concept of a well-lived life or an Aristotelian idea, I'll say flourishing because I can't say the Greek version of that word. And I was wondering again about how we argue this and establishing this value. 

Because I think in your paper too, you talk a lot about what I would characterize as instrumental values, if that's correct way of using the word in terms of here's the space medicine and economic activity. I like the idea of increasing the tax space. SpaceX has probably created a lot of new taxes to go into people. I don't know if it's paid for itself, but it might eventually. Is intrinsic values, are those boring to talk about? Are those because we just accept them or is it just the idea of instrumental value is just more important to establish or just how we naturally conceive of them?

Rebecca Lowe: I mean, I'd say one thing is that there is a little bit of a risk when we talk about intrinsic values that we slip straight into talking about things that are actually instrumental value. So people say things for instance like, I don't know, knowledge has got intrinsic value because it helps us to learn things though and I think there are some people who want to talk about it in terms of furthering our basic capacities or capabilities or something, which is maybe a good way of doing it. I think for the purposes of trying to justify space exploration, it's sufficient just to say something like, look, intrinsic value is just stuff that's valuable in itself. Instrumental value is when you use something to a further end. And it's definitely the case that the really easy arguments for, or at least as I see it for space spending are instrumental. 

So you can say the defense programs, that's probably the easiest one. I mean, again, we come back into my concern about dissents actually secretly hiding militarism, but in a world in which we've got aggressors, then we need to be able to defend ourselves. That's a pretty easy argument and anybody who doesn't think space is a part of that needs to go and read a bit more stuff about space, the medical stuff, the scientific stuff. I think those are also pretty easy arguments to make personally, I think the exciting things, and I think you're absolutely right. We're not good at talking about these things partly because I say because philosophically it's actually quite a complicated concept, but partly also your nice point you began with around people just feeling a little bit uncomfortable about it, talking about-

Casey Dreier: Is that because we don't have enough humanistic education anymore? Education [inaudible 01:07:22]-

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, maybe. Quite possibly. I think quite possibly. I also wonder it's something you made this nice point when you were talking earlier about the Mars rock. You said all these people are going past and they all wanted to touch it. And you said even adults, and I think you touched upon something really profound there, which is children have this sense of wonder, don't they? They're not embarrassed about trying new stuff and showing their feelings about how beautiful things are. They might not be so good at expressing those feelings, but children have this sense of curiosity. They like playing games, they love learning stuff. Little kids are always asking you why. They're great philosophers, as we get older and we maybe get more constrained by the norms of our society, we have all these expectations on us. I think it's very sad. I go around saying things like, I love space, and sometimes I think people look at me as if they think I'm some kind of child or something. 

I have absolutely no embarrassment admitting that I think space is really cool. I also think dinosaurs are really cool and on some level, I'm still exactly the same as I was when I was seven and I liked reading about space and dinosaurs and one of the reasons I like doing philosophy is because I can find a living sometimes writing about this stuff and because I think the children are right, this stuff is amazing. The amazing thing about being a human is being able to learn stuff about our world and that includes stuff outside of our nearby orbit [inaudible 01:08:48] and these things like stuff which is so far in the past that we can't know about it or like stuff, which is spatially far. So both temporally and spatially, who knows what's going on at the other side of the universe? I just struggle to think that we don't have some natural intrigue in those things, but as adults, many people are not very good at expressing that or admitting it even themselves.

Casey Dreier: I think we're trained to suppress it and I wonder if it's just... I sound like an old man now. I guess I am becoming an old man, but the idea of the culture being dominated by irony, that's hardening into cynicism as a way to maybe process the endless torrent of information that we're presented with now through our technology. You hit on something there that I've really thought about quite a bit of something like space and space works for me, other things work for other people. I think space probably could work for a lot of people, but pushing your brain to feel wonder when it is otherwise mired in irony and cynicism is a really refreshing feeling. 

And it reminds someone like me when I feel that, that there's more to existence than this constant maybe again, I'll crassly just say left and right brain. My left brain existence that otherwise, I'm typing all the time, I'm reading all the time. I'm consuming content and whatnot. We don't have a lot in our world anymore that's unknown or mythical or broadly hitting on these right-brain feelings that we are still there. And now I think maybe unhealthily express themselves in a variety of ways and space is a way to trigger and push our brain into states that it's no longer used to being in. As again, children don't have that, and so they get to have that all the time. 

My daughter will see water boiling in a pot and just have her mind blown. It's like it's actually pretty cool when you look at it. I think that that's in itself to me, one of the instrumental goods. I guess that you can correct me, this is where I kind of... It seems like that's maybe good for an individual that-

Rebecca Lowe: That's correct.

Casey Dreier: ... space to me literally pulls us out and up with the rest of the world really literally pulling us down and into our phones that are obsessing about what other people are doing and space serves as this counterpoint to that and to me [inaudible 01:11:09] in a healthy way.

Rebecca Lowe: I think that's right. I think that's right. I think maybe it's a character thing. I find my mind's blown almost every day by stuff I read or stuff I learn, but I think you've got to be open to that and maybe it's easier for some people than other people. It's also a point about demands on your time. So you're talking about your daughter. I don't have any kids. One reason I don't have any kids is because I want to have my free time to read philosophy. I think there's also just a-

Casey Dreier: There's not a lot of that in my life right now.

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, so I think there's also... It's like reading fiction. It's harder to justify reading fiction if you've got a kid who needs to be fed partly because the kid needs to be fed, therefore you need to make sure that your income also will cover the kid's needs and all of those things. But also because your kid is there wanting to ask you the questions about water, but not just wanting to ask you the questions about water. Also needing to have dinner made for it and her, him, and sorry I don't like calling children it, but you know what I mean.

Casey Dreier: Her. Yeah.

Rebecca Lowe: And that's just the case in societal terms as well, that most people, whether they want it or not, end up living a life in which they're prioritizing the kind of structural stuff, which means that they have income, means that they have societal respect, means that these other things. It shouldn't be the case that that's in conflict with having a sense of wonder and having a sense of awe. But sometimes the kinds of deep responsibilities people have, particularly if they're caring responsibilities, might just take up quite a lot of space in your mind.

Casey Dreier: And that's a great point, and I wonder, again, this is why space can be so compared to particle physics, which I find almost as equally exciting but visually far sparser. And I think maybe that's the key of why I resonate and see space as such an important role feeding back into a society in that it can very quickly trigger that for you without having to sit and read a lot of it. Right? So you see a picture from the James Webb Space Telescope. You see a picture on the surface of Mars, and it just shortcuts right to your brain, right through your ocular nerves, and you can feel that maybe even for a minute in a way that you don't have to have anyone explain it to you. 

This is one of the reasons founders of my organization, Planetary Society, Bruce Murray had to fight, fight, fight, fight in the early 1960s to include cameras on spacecraft because they weren't seen as scientifically valuable as some of the other instruments they can put on. And his whole argument was like, this is how the rest of the country will experience this, and he could not have been more correct, and for all the importance of those squiggly lines that those scientific instruments return, they don't hit that. Again, this other kind of the individualistic experiential aspect that I think at its core, maybe we're both hitting some point of agreement of maybe it's the essence of this and everything else is justification.

Rebecca Lowe: I think we totally are and actually I hadn't really thought about this before, but I think the visual accessibility of the wonder of space is something that makes it deeply egalitarian. I'm sure that's also something that feeds into this point around why we have this shared interest. You're right. I mean, I don't know so much about particle physics, but the small amount I do know I find it endlessly interesting, but yeah, there's going to be greater demands on my time to learn and the opportunity cost also. 

I could be reading philosophy and to be a good philosopher, I should know stuff about science, but I don't need to be putting down my book of Quine to look up and see the moon out the window, and neither did the ancient Egyptian who was busy building the pyramid in order to go back home in six months time to feed his family. It's something that's immediate and it's something that's deeply accessible to anybody who's fortunate enough to be able to go outside and have sight, which is the majority of people who've experienced life. Sadly, not everyone. There's no mediation required. I think that's the point, isn't it?

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Is it space is the Protestant tradition of science?

Rebecca Lowe: Yeah, I know. I know. That's right. [inaudible 01:15:01]-

Casey Dreier: No priestly cast required.

Rebecca Lowe: Exactly. There you go. Individualism again.

Casey Dreier: There we go. Rebecca Lowe, what a delight. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. We will link to your papers on the show and your Substack. Tell me the name of your Substack and how people can find that.

Rebecca Lowe: It's called the ends don't justify the means. You can find it by typing my-

Casey Dreier: On Substack I guess. Yeah. Ends don't justify the means Substack, I'm a subscriber. I enjoy it a lot. Thank you so much for joining us this month.

Rebecca Lowe: Thank you so much. I've so enjoyed it.

Casey Dreier: We've reached the end of this month's episode of the Space Policy Edition of Planetary Radio, but we will be back next month with more discussions on the politics and philosophies, and ideas that power space science, and exploration. Help others in the meantime, learn more about Space Policy and the Planetary Society by leaving a review and rating this show on platforms like Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to this show. Your input and interactions really help us be discovered by other curious minds and that will help them find their place in space through Planetary Radio. 

You can also send us, including me, your thoughts and questions at [email protected], or if you're a Planetary Society member, and I hope you are, leave me a comment In the Planetary Radio space in our online member community. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers of the show. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Me, Casey Dreier, and Merc Boyan, my colleague composed and performed our Space Policy Edition theme. The Space Policy Edition is a production of the Planetary Society, an independent nonprofit space outreach organization based in Pasadena, California. We are membership based and anybody even you can become a member, they start at just $4 a month. That's nothing these days. Find out more at planetary.org/join. Until next month ad astra.